


best of dark and bright

by mayfriend



Series: she walks in beauty [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Genderbending, Genderswap, Girl-Who-Lived, Power Imbalance, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 22:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12714501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: What have we here, a voice crows from somewhere inside her mind, hmmm, difficult, very difficult… brave, but you would have to be wouldn’t you? Not a bad mind, and talent - oh my goodness, yes, such talent. And you want to prove yourself, don’t you? Have a hunger for it… to prove you’re more than a soulmate… but where to put you…Not Slytherin,Harry thinks as clearly as she can,not Slytherin, not Slytherin…Oh my dear girl,the hat mutters,are you sure? You could be great, you know, and Slytherin could help you on the way to greatness, it’s all here in your head…I want nothing to do with him,she concentrates so hard that she thinks she might give herself a headache,I don’t want his words, I don’t want his mark, I don’t want to be in his house-Understood,the hat grumbles,well, if you’re so against Slytherin, then it had better be-“-GRYFFINDOR!”A soulmate AU where Harriet Potter thinks she has enough problems in her first year at Hogwartswithouther soulmate being the man who killed her parents, thank you very much, but she doesn't get a vote.





	best of dark and bright

**Author's Note:**

> I'm meant to be working on my Nanowrimo, and I am... but I kind of wrote this while procrastinating writing. Yeah, I dunno either. As always, I am an utter slut for genderbends, have no beta, and live only off your feedback. Enjoy!
> 
> Title, and series title, taken from Lord Byron's _She Walks in Beauty_.

Like most children, Harry learned how to spell her words before she learned how to spell her own name. But unlike most children, she didn’t know what they meant until she was eleven years old.

She imagined they were some strange language, that her soulmate was from a far away, exotic land where monkeys were pets and the sun burned exposed ankles and where nobody was locked away in a cupboard when they did something wrong. She dreamed of them - of a handsome, dark suitor who took her away from the Dursleys on a flying carpet and who would never let anyone shut her in a small space again.

 _Avada Kedavra,_ she hoped was a greeting. Not too common, of course - she knew too many people who were unfortunate enough to have the most general words on their wrists - _hello, hi, sorry, yes._ But it couldn’t be that common - she had looked in the local library, in all their foreign language dictionaries, and found nothing. Still, she could wait. Harriet knew how to wait, knew how to bide her time to ask Aunt Petunia for scraps, knew when to be quiet, to be hidden. She could wait for her soulmate too.

Until Hagrid, and magic, and Diagon Alley and Ollivander and _it is very curious indeed you should be destined for this wand, when its brother gave you that scar_. And Harry, Harry who hadn’t even known about magic for a whole decade of life, Harry who wanted so desperately to be loved, Harry couldn’t wait anymore. “Hagrid,” she said after he’d finished his pint, “do you know what _Avada Kedavra_ means?”

Behind his bushy beard, Hagrid’s ruddy face goes as white as snow in a heartbeat. “Where’d ya hear tha’?” He says, eyes darting across the Leaky Cauldron, afraid someone might have heard.

“Just, um, in the alley,” she says quickly, “one of the people- the ones who knew my name- they said it.”

Hagrid, bless him, buys the lie. “You shouldn’ know about tha’...” he says to himself, wringing his hands, “I bet it was bloomin’ Diggle. Never knew when ta keep his mouth shut...”

Harry knows she should let it go. Knows that he’s on edge, distrustful, it’s the worst time to push. But this is her soulmate, her soul words, and Hagrid _knows_ what they mean; so she doesn’t let it go. “What does it mean though?” she asks, and blinks up at the huge man, trying to find that balance between sweet and innocent that gets her an extra out-of-date chocolate bar from Mrs Figg.

Hagrid stares for a moment, then resolutely shakes his head, “You’re too young for all tha’,” he says firmly, “Ain’t righ’.”

“Is it about my parents?” she asks, “About what happened to them?” That’s why all the people had been mobbing her, after all. And from Hagrid’s reaction, his acceptance of her story that it was one of them to say it - it has to be. “I deserve to know, Hagrid. Until last night, I thought they died in a car crash.” The hurt that finds its way into her voice is real then.

Hagrid scrubs a hand over his face. “I- ugh- alrigh’. It’s- it’s a spell, Harry. A dark spell. It’s-” his eyes flick around the room again, despite the fact that all the others patrons are paying them not attention now that Harry has a pointed hat on her head that is covering the scar, “It’s the spell that killed your parents. It’s- it’s the spell that shoulda killed you. That’s why you’re famous, Harry. He used the killing curse on you, and you survived. Nobody survives tha’, Harry. That’s why all these people ‘ave been mobbing you. That’s why you’re famous. That’s why everyone knows your name.” Hagrid, moved by his own words, downs the rest of his pint in one long gulp.

There is an odd rushing sound in Harry’s ears. Something is pricking in her eyes, and her wrist - the one that is covered with a ribbon, the one thing Aunt Petunia would buy for her herself, knowing that it would be social suicide if her niece’s soulmark was seen due to a flimsy covering - her wrist is burning. _Avada Kedavra._ The killing curse.

She feels like a fool. A stupid, stupid child whose head was up in the clouds - a kind, exotic stranger, to rescue her from the Dursleys, whose words were tantamount to a declaration of love. Stupid, stupid girl. She has already heard her words. She just can’t remember them. They were meant to kill her, to end her life. They killed her parents.

Her soulmate killed her parents.

“I-” she doesn’t know what she’s going to say to Hagrid, because her stomach churns and twists and she vomits all over the floor of the Leaky Cauldron.

* * *

After that day in Diagon, Harry has learned her lesson about soulmates, about dreaming, about somebody - anybody - coming to save her. The world is cruel, terribly so - she could have been so many people’s perfect someone, if only she’d been given a chance. She could have given somebody everything she was, and more - but no. The other half of her soul is the man who killed her parents. The man who tried to kill her. _I don’t think he’s really gone,_ Hagrid had said.

 _Avada Kedavra._ Not a greeting, but a farewell of sorts.

Despite the fact that the Dursleys are terrified of her now, that she has her own bedroom, that she has Hedwig, that she has _magic,_ Harry has never felt so miserable. She distracts herself, or at least attempts to with her school books - she reads the entirety of Hogwarts: A History, no matter how little she cares for how many staircases the castle has. She barely understands her potions book, despite her knowing more about plants than most people her age. She likes her Defence Against the Dark Arts text the best - it’s strange to know that werewolves and vampires are real, but what really catches her interest is at the very end of the book.

The killing curse is in this book. It’s almost laughable that she spent so long poring through foreign dictionaries, when it is in her school book. _Unblockable, unforgivable. Appears as a green light. Painless, and instant. As the name suggests, it is always fatal._

Unlike the other spells in the book, there are no wand movements, no hints and tips on how to get it, no wider reading. It just says to dodge. Dodge or die.

That night she dreams of a high, cold laugh and a sickly green light.

* * *

The train is, in simple terms, a complete and utter minefield.

Within an eight hour journey, Harry has witnessed no less than fourteen people meeting their soulmates. The first two are two boys on the platform, who stare at one another for a long moment after they’ve said their words before throwing their arms around one another, chattering as if they’ve known each other their whole lives. After that, she sees a round faced boy shyly shaking the hand of a pink cheeked girl with blonde plaits, after saying a bit too loudly _‘Oh! You’re the one!’_

It becomes a bit of a blur after that point - people embracing, grinning, staring, running. Harry hadn’t expected to have other people’s happiness thrown in her face so immediately. Every compartment she turns to has soulmates in, or so it seems - she can tell by the sappy, starstruck looks on their faces. Her ribbon is firmly wrapped around her wrist, and it always will be, even as the coverings flutter to the floor of the carriages, numerous and quickly trampled underfoot.

Harry was beginning to despair of ever finding a place to sit, when she heard a quiet sob. Her head turned automatically, and she saw a small form curled up in an otherwise empty compartment. It made sense, she thought. Nobody wanted to be reminded of unhappiness on the day they met their other half.

Steeling herself, Harry opened the door. “Can I come in?” She asks, hating how shy she sounds, “Everywhere else is… full.”

The girl that turned around had a face made red and blotchy with tears, and her bushy brown hair was wild around her face. “Um,” she said after a moment, clearing her throat, clearly not expecting to be interrupted, before waving at the empty compartment with an air of despondency, “sure.”

Harry gave her a strained smile, and sat down, letting the door slide shut behind her. They sat for a moment in uncomfortable silence, the other girl clearly going to some effort to stop herself from crying. “I won’t tell anyone,” Harry said awkwardly after a moment, hands curled in her lap, “I promise.”

The girl gave her a watery smile. “Thanks,” she said softly, “I just… I couldn’t stay out there, you know? It’s a bit-”

“Crazy?” Harry finished, returning a grin of her own. The girl giggled, and wiped at her damp cheeks with the sleeves of her jumper.

“I’m Hermione Granger,” she said, thrusting her hand out towards Harry, “and I promise I don’t usually cry.”

“I’m Harry,” Harry replied, taking her hand, eager to break the tension, “nice to meet you.”

“Harry?” Hermione frowns, and Harry hopes desperately that she isn’t about to repeat the whole song and dance of Diagon Alley, even though she’s made sure to make sure her scar is covered by her fringe. “Isn’t that a boy’s name?” She says instead.

“It’s a nickname,” Harry says with an internal sigh of relief, “It just kind of stuck.”

Hermione nods, accepting, before looking out of the window again as yet another rambunctious party of just-bonded people rush past. _It was amazing! She’s perfect! I can’t believe it!_ Before Harry realises what she’s doing, she sighs heavily.

“They get you down too?” Hermione asks, looking over at her.

Harry considers lying, but ends up just shrugging her shoulders. “I guess,” she says shortly, “I wish they weren’t so…” She fiddles with her hands in her lap.

“In your face about it?”

Harry’s head snaps up. Whatever she had been expecting, it hadn’t been that. “Yeah,” she says, before she can stop herself.

“My soulmate let me down too,” Hermione said quiety when Harry opens her mouth to back track, to deny, deny and deny again. Harry’s mouth stays open, in a sort of disbelief.

They’ve just met. But already, Harry suddenly feels a kinship with this girl, who cried unashamedly and said what she thought. Harry wishes she was as brave. She thinks that Hermione Granger is utterly brilliant for the first time, but certainly not for the last. “How did you-”

“I had a hunch,” Hermione tells her with a shrug, calculated in its indifference, “nobody sits next to a crying stranger unless they’re desperate.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry says lamely, “about your- about that person.”

“Yeah,” Hermione says hollowly, her eyes going far away for a moment, “me too. But it’s his loss.” In a complete antithesis to her words, her brown eyes are beginning to fill with tears again, perhaps because saying the words makes it feel more real.

“It is,” Harry says without a second thought, “you’re brilliant.”

Hermione laughs thickly. “You don’t know me.”

Harry shrugs. “I know enough.”

It turns out, commiserating over rubbish soulmates is a wonderful bonding activity, and by the end of the train journey, during which they’re left alone save for the same round faced boy from earlier coming around asking about his toad and by the trolley witch, Harry feels like she’s known Hermione for years.

* * *

 Harry watches Hermione squirm in front of everyone as the sorting hat sits on her head. It’s been almost three minutes when the hat declares _GRYFFINDOR!_ and her very first friend grins. Hermione was a muggleborn, and she all she knew about Hogwarts she’d read in a book, just like Harry, but she already knew that she wanted to be in Gryffindor - _it’s the best house by far,_ she had told Harry excitedly after Harry had admitted that she didn’t know anything about the houses, _for the brave and valiant. The common room is in a tower, like Ravenclaw, although_ Hogwarts: A History _didn’t say which one because the houses don’t know where each other’s common rooms are, and the colours are red and gold, and Dumbledore, that’s the headmaster, he was a Gryffindor-_

It’s excruciating, waiting for her name to be called. Before now, she’d never put much thought into how far back Potter was in the alphabet. There are two students who take noticeably longer than others - a girl called _Bulstrode, Millicent_ and the same round faced boy from the train who is apparently _Longbottom, Neville._ Some of them, like _Malfoy, Draco_ took less than a second.

But when Harry’s name is called, suddenly it seems so much worse than waiting. Whispers break out around the hall as she mounts the steps and walks towards the sorting hat.

“-did she say Potter? _The_ Harriet Potter-”

“Did you see her? Did you see the _scar-”_

The darkness of the hat is almost a relief. _What have we here?_ a voice asks from somewhere inside her mind. _H_ _mmm, difficult, very difficult… brave, but you would have to be wouldn’t you? Not a bad mind, and talent - oh my goodness, yes, such talent. And you want to prove yourself, don’t you? Have a hunger for it… to prove you’re more than a soulmate… but where to put you…_

 _Not Slytherin,_ Harry thinks as clearly as she can, _not Slytherin, not Slytherin…_

 _Oh my dear girl,_ the hat mutters, _are you sure? You could be great, you know, and Slytherin could help you on the way to greatness, it’s all here in your head…_

 _I want nothing to do with him,_ she concentrates so hard that she thinks she might give herself a headache, _I don’t want his words, I don’t want his mark, I don’t want to be in his house-_

 _Understood,_ the hat grumbles, _well, if you’re so against Slytherin, then it had better be-_

“-GRYFFINDOR!” The hat roared aloud, and cheering and clapping filled the hall. Harry wondered if it was a bit louder for her than the others, but she couldn’t be sure. The table on the far left exploded with cheers, and Harry’s eyes found Hermione’s beaming face almost immediately. A redheaded boy with a gleaming _P_ pinned to his robes got up and shook her hand, and twin boys loudly chorused “We got Potter! We got Potter!”

“I’m so glad we’re together,” Hermione told her as Harry took the seat next to her, and she grabbed her hand and squeezed it. Warmth filled Harry’s chest at the gesture. Now that she could properly see the high table, her gaze fell automatically on Hagrid, and the gentle giant gave her a big thumbs up.

She picked out the few other faces that she knew - Dumbledore, looking exactly as he had on his chocolate frog card, sat in the very centre of the table wearing a some purple, pink and orange robes that made Harry’s eyes hurt. Down the other end sat the professor she had met in the Leaky Cauldron, Quirrell - he was now wearing a very large, strange purple turban, and he was in conversation with a dark haired, hook nosed man dressed all in black- and at that moment a shot of pain went through her head.

“You alright?” Hermione asked, looking at her with concern.

Harry nodded weakly. The pain was already fading. “I think I gave myself a headache, arguing with the hat.”

Hermione laughed, and Harry couldn’t help but think that a smile completely transformed her face.

* * *

That night, despite her tiredness, Harry spends half the night chatting with the other girls in Gryffindor tower. It’s her, Hermione, an indian girl called Parvati who had an identical twin in Ravenclaw, and a very blonde, bubbly girl called Lavender. To her intense relief, Hermione was the only one who had met her soulmate on the train of the four of them - Lavender was practically in a frenzy after seeing so many people meeting their other halves, and pounced on the news.

“Was it _terrible_?” The blonde girl asked, almost like a bloodhound on the scent of drama.

Hermione shrugged in a deliberately blase way, but Harry could see her hands were trembling as she folded her robes into her small wardrobe. “He wasn’t what I was expecting, is all.”

“Leave off,” she told Lavender, a bit sharper than she intended, who slunk back to her case like a kicked puppy at the rebuke, “it’s not any of our business.”

Hermione gave her a small, grateful smile for that.

As they settled into bed that night, Harry couldn’t help notice Hermione closing her hangings all the way shut, and couldn’t help hearing a muffled sob, barely masked by Parvati and Lavender’s even breathing - once, twice, before silence. One day, maybe Harry would be brave enough to ask, and maybe one day Hermione would trust her enough to tell her. But not tonight. The wound was too fresh.

Harry has a wild thought, strange and a little bit mad, that the world would be better without soulmarks.

* * *

In many ways, the story remains the same. Harry makes her first and dearest friend on the Hogwarts express. She drags Ronald Weasley with her on the night of the Halloween feast when she finds out that her best friend has been crying in a toilet all day because of him and his stupid mouth, still gets her wand covered in troll snot, still makes a friend for life in those toilets.

Some things change. Draco Malfoy never approaches Harry, perhaps because she’s a girl, perhaps because of the way she won’t be separated from Hermione, perhaps because of the way she didn't react to his _Hogwarts too?_ the way he reacted, no matter how silently, to her cautious  _yes_ in Madam Malkin's. Some things really change. Ron twists his mouth as he apologises, and keeps his eyes on his shoes, and tells Hermione that he should never have said the things he did. _Especially not to you,_ are his exact words, and something bright flickers in Hermione’s dark eyes. He starts sitting with them at lunch, barely talking at first, but slowly taking part more and more in the conversations. He bumps Hermione’s shoulder and bemoans Snape’s unfairness with Harry, thrashes both of them at chess and turns in ink blotted essays that Hermione raises her eyebrows at disapprovingly.

Just before Christmas Break, Hermione stops wearing her ribbon. And Ron stops wearing his. It’s barely noticed by anyone but Harry; just under half of Hogwarts students walk around bare wristed, and the shine’s gone off somewhat since the beginning of term. Ron’s say’s _you have dirt on your nose_ in Hermione’s loopy cursive _,_ and Hermione’s says _who asked you?_ in Ron’s chicken scratch. They are not what Harry would consider each other’s other halves; they are instead whole people, who argue and fall out and disagree, and Ron wrinkles his nose when he sees Neville Longbottom giving his bonded a kiss on the cheek, both as bright red as the other. “That’s _gross,”_ he says with feeling, and Hermione agrees fervently.

For all that in the future, they’ll probably fall in love, get married, have babies like Harry’s been taught soulmates do, right now, their bickering is more of a balm to Harry than either of them could ever know. It’s not eternal. It’s not absolute. It isn’t a chain, a duty, a handicap. It’s… it’s the way that Ron turns to Hermione when he really doesn’t get something, and doesn’t find any shame in it - at least not anymore. It’s the way that Hermione says _again_ every time Ron beats her at chess, because she wants to get better.

It’s the way she never feels like she’s intruding, not like she did when she was at the Dursley’s - Vernon and Petunia had always made it very clear that they had no room for her in their normal, bonded lives with their nuclear family and white picket fence. But most evenings, she sits in between Ron and Hermione in the common room, and feels like there is space for her with them, within Hogwarts, like there hasn’t been ever before.

 _Who needs you?_ she thinks as she stares at her covered wrist in the weak lamplight of the toilet, unable to sleep in the middle of the night. Impulsively, she tugs the covering away, almost expecting the words to have faded - but they are as bright and vivid and terrible as ever. _Avada Kedavra_ stands stark against her skin like a claim. She looks away before the calligraphy can burrow its way into her brain.

In many ways, the story remains the same. Harry gets her father’s cloak for Christmas, and sneaks around the castle in the dead of night when she can’t sleep. She finds the Mirror of Erised, and sees her family around her for the first time in her life. She has her mother’s green, green eyes, and her father’s dark, wild hair. Harry and Ron and Hermione figure out someone is trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone - they wrongly guess that Snape is the thief. Ron is still knocked out in the chess room, Hermione still figures out the potion puzzle, Harry still goes alone through the flames.

“You?” she says when she sees Quirrell crouched before the mirror, talking to himself. And that’s when the story changes.

* * *

_Liar!_ is still the first thing Harry Potter ever says to Lord Voldemort. Quirrell doesn’t know the words, had never met his master with a body and a scribbled-on wrist, but the thing on the back of his head starts, hesitates.

 _Her wrist,_ he hisses to Quirrell,  _check her wrist._

Quirrell flicks his wand at Harry’s tied up body, and her right sleeve rises. Her ribbon flutters to the ground. Even Quirrell understands, then. _Master,_ he says, the stutter now long forgotten, _master it says… it says..._

_Show me!_

Obedient, and terrified, Quirrell turns and the terrible, snake-like face looks down on Harry with those red, red eyes. She scrabbles for her sleeve, a task harder said than done when your arms are trapped at your sides, and she isn’t quick enough. _Avada Kedavra,_ Voldemort reads in his own flawless script, and fury rises in him along with understanding.

“Dumbledore,” the face hisses in a terrible, twisted snarl, “he knew, he knew all along-” His deathly gaze snaps onto Harry’s, and she pulls against the ropes desperately, hopelessly, and he cocks his head, examining her - she is eleven years old to his sixty five, and much too small for her age. “When I have the stone,” he says to her, “I will have a body. And when I have a body, I will have _you-”_

“Never!” Harry shrieks, and she means it. She means it, even if it means she dies here and now, eleven years old and terrified and alone. Oh, she is so alone. “Professor Dumbledore will stop you! You can’t get the stone, Quirrell already failed-”

“No,” the monster said, “I can’t get the stone. But _you_ can.”

The ropes fall away into nothingness. Harry stumbles to her feet, hemmed in against the wall of fire. Her heart is beating in her ears like a drum. “Look into the mirror,” the monster tells her, and her feet move forward without her wanting them to.

She screws her eyes shut. There is a hot puff of air on the back of her neck and she screams, but she can’t move away. She can only look. Can only look into the mirror. Her parents are gone, gone when she wants and needs them the most - instead, it is only her, her and the demon at her shoulder.

“What do you see?” The phantom whispers, “What do you see, Harriet Potter? What is your heart’s desire?”

Her reflection stares back at her, sure where she is afraid. And the face - the thing on the back of Quirrell’s head - it changes. It changes from a formless monster to a man - a man with the same scarlet eyes, but a head of hair, fine bone structure, a smirk on his handsome face. He looks strong. She blinks, tries to banish him, but he won’t go.

“I see-” she says, her mouth going dry, and her reflection, unconcerned, winks at her and pulls a glinting red stone out of her pocket. It shines in the reflection of the flames, and something heavy drops into her pocket. “I see Dumbledore- I’ve, I’ve won the house cup-”

“ _Liar_ ,” Voldemort mocks at her side. Rage rises in her, hot and striking, and she tears her gaze away from the mirror. “You have it, don’t you? Give me the stone, Harriet, and I will make you a queen. Give me the stone, Harriet. You were meant to be mine.”

She steps away, deliberately, and raises her chin in defiance. “I don’t think so.”

An expression of overwhelming loathing twists onto Voldemort’s face. “Quirrell,” he says in that high, terrible voice, the one she dreams of night after night with no escape, laughing as her mother screams, laughing as she suffers, “get the stone. I want her alive.”

Quirrell turns, and the terrible face blessedly disappears. Quirrell is not a friendly face, no, especially not as he rushes at her, but he is better than that thing. Anything is better than that. She throws her hands up to cover her face, and waits for the blow. The blow that never comes.

Instead, Quirrell screams, and Harry opens her eyes to see the palms of Quirrell’s hands hissing with large, painful welts. “Master!” he cries, “Master, it burns-”

“ _Get the stone!”_

Quirrell’s eyes shine with indecision, his own instinctive need to survive versus his master’s will. So Harry makes the decision for him. She launches forward, and presses her hands against every part of him she can touch - his hands, wrists, forearms, neck, face, scalp. It is burning her, too, but she doesn't care about that. She wants to hurt him. Wants to destroy him, and doesn't care if it destroys her too. He wails, falls to the ground, screeches like a boiling kettle. In her ears she can hear Voldemort’s curses, growing weaker and weaker, and finally, finally Quirrell’s body stops bubbling under her hands and falls to the floor, dead.

She staggers back, shaking, blistered and victorious, and some kind of blackened vapour arises from Quirrell’s corpse. It has no face, but Harry knows it all the same - _I will return,_ the monster promises, _I will return for you, Harriet Potter…_

 _And I'll be ready,_ she swears right back.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at: [mayfriend](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com)


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